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Sunday, July 14, 2013

Plaguewing vs. Tau batrep (2000 points) • Part One

I played in an RTT yesterday over at Coliseum of Comics in Kissimmee, Florida. Double FOC, allies and Forge World 40k approved units were all in effect. My first two games were both versus Tau and the last game was versus an Iyanden eldar army. This battle report covers the first game.

-???- Forge World
2x Sensor Tower (counts as artillery)Once per turn per Sensor Tower a unit within 6" of a Remote Sensor Tower may re-roll all failed to hit rolls in its owning player’s Shooting phase and gains the Night Vision/Acute Senses special rule.

TERTIARY OBJECTIVE 2 battle points (Win), 1 battle point (Draw)
Table Quarters - Each table quarter can held by a scoring unit and contested by a denial unit.

BONUSES
•First Blood
•Slay the Warlord
•Line Breaker

Each bonus is worth 2 battle points.

The maximum battle points you could score was 20.

I won the roll to choose my deployment zone (DZ) and elected the side with a line of sight (LOS) blocking building located towards the center of the table.

I also won the roll to place the first objective marker. I placed my three with one close to the LOS blocking building and another deep inside my DZ. I placed my last objective marker off to my left side behind a small forest towards the middle of the table... I should have placed this one much farther back away from the Tau line - big mistake there on my part. My opponent placed his two of his objective markers right behind his ADL - one in the middle and the other over towards my right.

Army Deployment
Finally I won the roll to deploy first and did so. First I placed my dreadnaught in cover on high ground at the center point right along my short table edge. The basic strategy here is many armies can never reach the dreadnaught and must focus on the rest of my army up close right in their grill while I drop a S10 AP1 pie plate each turn with unlimited range. Next I deployed a squad of Plaguebearers in cover to hold the objective marker deep within my DZ along with the Obliterators up front in the woods. I deployed all three rhinos behind the central building counting on going first to move up towards it for some hard cover. My Chaos Lord Blotus and his Sorcerer Festur attached to each other and were deployed behind the rhinos. I deployed the Daemon Prince in cover beside the Obliterators and Plaguebearers. I held the other squad of Plaguebearers in reserve and elected to deep strike them.

My opponent placed his ADL right along the outer boundary of his DZ with the sensor towers side by side just inside the middle. He deployed the two 12 man squads of Fire Warriors and Pathfinders just inside the ADL on either side of the two towers with the Fire Blade manning the Icarus lascannon. Shadowsun and her posse were deployed in cover over to my right side of the ADL. All of his vehicles were deployed centrally behind the ADL with the two Hammerheads in the center. Note that his Ethereal was embarked inside one of the two Devilfish. He then opted to hold his Piraña in reserve.

Night Fight was in effect the first turn and my opponent failed to seize the initiative.

PRE GAME ANALYSIS
I felt like I could win this game but knew going in it would be hard fought... Tau can lay down so much fire power as we all know. Being able to pick my deployment zone, go first and place three of the five objective markers was a really huge advantage. Night Fight being in effect the first turn was a disadvantage since that pretty much eliminated my chance to alpha strike and my opponent had lots of Black Sun filters throughout his army (note - not shown in his army list above).

I was hoping to entice my opponent to shoot the rhinos first with his Fire Warriors so he would wreck rather than destroy them thus providing more hard cover for my army. If so I could safely hide my Death Guard along with the biker HQ and wait until the latter part of the game to grab the one objective marker I had placed over to my left towards the middle of the table.

My battle plan was simple:

1) Move up the rhinos and bikers to midfield then hold their ground.
2) Shoot'em up the dreadnaught and Obliterators.
3) Biker HQ and one dedicated squad of Death Guard counter assault any Tau units foolish enough to venture into midfield.
4) Grab the third objective marker on turn 4 to 5 for the win.

Finally I was hoping my Daemon Prince could quickly get behind the Aegis Defense Line to inflict some major damage in the Tau backfield... The Daemon Prince (Big Black Fiend) was my proverbial ace up the sleeve.